Services are becoming more diverse in the 5G era. A single network architecture is not able to efficiently satisfy the diversion requirements for different use cases. The concept of network slices would facilitate the provision of certain type of network services to a certain group of uses cases sharing similar service requirements. New network slice can be provided on the fly without impacting the operation of the existing network slices. However, while the isolation nature of network slicing hinders the function sharing and information exchange between network slices.
A network slice, e.g., a “5G slice” may support the communication service of a particular connection type with a specific way of handling the Control-plane (C-plane) and User-plane (U-plane) for this service.
Each network slice can contain a set of C-plane functions (e.g., mobility management, session management, etc.) which are adapted to its specific service requirements (e.g., delay critical MTC, massive MTC, MBB . . . ). However, a complete, monolithic C-plane solution per slice is not efficient.